"Impersonal" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... own way through it, and to owe our insight to ourselves. The historians of former ages, unapproachable for us in knowledge and in talent, cannot be our limit. We have the power to be more rigidly impersonal, disinterested and just than they; and to learn from undisguised and genuine records to look with remorse upon the past, and to the future with assured hope of better things; bearing this in mind, that if we lower our standard in history, ...
— A Lecture on the Study of History • Lord Acton
... these mediaeval rooms possess a peculiar, intimate character and mark the change of feeling which came over French artists of the time. The impersonal, unemotional and regal bearing of the thirteenth-century figures give way to a more naturalistic treatment. The Virgin's impassive features soften; they become more human; she turns to her child with ...
— The Story of Paris • Thomas Okey
... does not exhibit the highest type of social response in the recognition of impersonal evil, in the quest of knowledge, or in free discussion. Almost two centuries of dogma-worship, with its contemplation of selected facts, has made it now impossible to secure from one thoroughly socialized in the spirit of the place the exact truth upon any matter. It seems to be reserve which ...
— Quaker Hill - A Sociological Study • Warren H. Wilson
... resourcefulness, amazing in her power, a woman whose life was bound up with his and yet held apart from him in the most inexplicable, absorbing way; a woman he had never seen, save for her gloved arm in the limousine that night, who at one unexpected moment projected a dazzling, impersonal existence across his path, and the next, leaving him battling for his life where greed and passion and crime swirled ...
— The Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard
... well-being the ordinary processes of Nature, whether animal or vegetable, were closely and intimately concerned. In fact the central figure of these rites, by whatever name he may be called, is the somewhat elusive and impersonal entity, who represents in anthropomorphic form the principle of animate Nature, upon whose preservation, and unimpaired energies, the life of ...
— From Ritual to Romance • Jessie L. Weston
... doctrine of the unity of God, and yet without employing the Logos christology. These attempts were made chiefly between the latter part of the second century and the end of the third. They fall into classes accordingly as they regard the divine element in Christ as personal or impersonal. One class makes the divine element to be an impersonal power (Greek, dynamis) sent from God into the man Jesus; hence the term "Dynamistic Monarchians." The other class makes the divine element a person, without, however, making any personal distinction between Father and Son, only a difference ...
— A Source Book for Ancient Church History • Joseph Cullen Ayer, Jr., Ph.D.
... had begun which would continue move by move and hour by hour until the Federation's scientists were satisfied that no further scraps of information could be drained from the prisoners. The investigation might be completely impersonal; but the fact that they were being ignored here as sentient beings, were not permitted to argue their case or offer an explanation, seemed more chilling than deliberate brutality. And yet, Halder told himself, he couldn't really blame anyone for the situation they were ...
— The Other Likeness • James H. Schmitz
... scarcely less the flare of the street-lamps below, the white electric lustre which it would have taken curtains to keep out. This was human actual social; this was of the world he had lived in, and he was more at his ease certainly for the countenance, coldly general and impersonal, that all the while and in spite of his detachment it seemed to give him. He had support of course mostly in the rooms at the wide front and the prolonged side; it failed him considerably in the central shades and the parts at the back. But if he sometimes, ...
— The Jolly Corner • Henry James
... observation shows, that, as time runs on, matter tends more and more to become goods, the blind forms of motion in nature to become useful labor and useful sustenance, impersonal and objectless existence to be transformed into personal property and personal culture, Schaeffle inclines to the belief that the whole mechanism of unconsciously governing nature is destined ultimately to aid in the realization ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • William Roscher
... space in a particular form. In this aspect it is pure intelligence undifferentiated into individuality. As pure intelligence it is infinite responsiveness and susceptibility. As devoid of relation to time and space it is devoid of individual personality. It is, therefore, in this aspect a purely impersonal element upon which, by reason of its inherent intelligence and susceptibility, we can impress any recognition of personality that we will. These are the great facts that the mental scientist works with, and the student will do well to ponder deeply on their significance and on the responsibilities ...
— The Edinburgh Lectures on Mental Science • Thomas Troward
... hardly be a big railroad man in the country who wasn't born in sight of the Rockies." Unlike Mr. Fowler, whose mind ran in a groove leading directly to business, the judge had a natural bent toward generalization, and when dining, preferred to discuss impersonal topics. He was a tall, florid man with an immense paunch flattened by artificial devices, and a vitality so excessive that it overflowed in numberless directions—in his hearty animal appetites, in his love of sports, in ...
— Life and Gabriella - The Story of a Woman's Courage • Ellen Glasgow
... nurse, with the calm impersonal manner of her kind. "I heard the ring and heard what he said to the maid; and, like her, I was surprised to hear that it was Miss Burton's father. However, I paid little attention, but ...
— Ashton-Kirk, Criminologist • John T. McIntyre
... was markedly impersonal. They spoke of stock raising, of the best breeds of beef cattle, of what had been done with irrigation and of what Rios planned for another year. It became clear that Zoraida was the sole owner of ...
— Daughter of the Sun - A Tale of Adventure • Jackson Gregory
... a disease—you wouldn't know it if I were to tell you its name—that is one of the most obscure known to science, if you can call a thing known when no cure can be discovered to it. Yes, she's hopelessly paralysed, is poor Hilaria." A certain impersonal note as he spoke of the illness had crept through all the ...
— Secret Bread • F. Tennyson Jesse
... in her eyes; but she persevered. She struck boldly for the public, the impersonal note. She set against the tragic appeal of the dead the equally tragic appeal of the living. She had in her mind the memory of that London church, with the strained upturned faces, the "hungry sheep"—girls among them, perhaps, in peril like Hester, men assailed by ...
— The Case of Richard Meynell • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... looking rather frightened, was coming down with a traveling-bag. She put down the bag and scuttled up the staircase like a scared rabbit. The little doctor was grim. She eyed Peter and Harmony with an impersonal hostility, referable ...
— The Street of Seven Stars • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... in the case of martyrs that enthusiasm is contagious. However highly we may estimate the impersonal forces that operate for 'the furtherance of the gospel' we cannot but see that in all ages, from the time of Paul down to to-day, the main agents for the spread of the gospel have been individual souls all aflame with the love of God ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... the girl were always too short. And he was surprised to find that they never appeared to lengthen. His interest in Dickie, he told himself, was purely impersonal. She told him of just the things he desired to hear most about. Kept him in touch with his world. Brought him news each day from the cannery; the business for which he hungered and fretted during each minute of ...
— El Diablo • Brayton Norton
... and I don't think he could be got up to the knoll. He's too heavy. I've seen him. And if you did get him up, I don't really think he'd ever find her in these caves," said the Terror in the dispassionate tone of one discussing an entirely impersonal matter. ...
— The Terrible Twins • Edgar Jepson
... creation—all these later accretions represent, no doubt, the reaction upon Buddhism of its Hinduistic surroundings. But they doubtless helped also to stimulate the growth of the more definite forms of anthropomorphism which characterised the development of Hinduism when the ancient ritual and the more impersonal gods of the Vedas and of the Brahmanas gave way to the cult of such very personal gods as Shiva and Vishnu, with their feminine counterparts, Kali and Lakshmi, and ultimately to the evolution of still more popular deities, some, like Skanda and the elephant-headed Ganesh, closely ...
— India, Old and New • Sir Valentine Chirol
... for the chill, impersonal reply. When she did not speak, he leaned and peered at the spot where he knew she must be. "If you want to try it, we'd better be starting," he urged sharply. "It's going to be pretty ...
— The Uphill Climb • B. M. Bower
... slim her hand was. Yes, that was pretty—and her hair—the way it grew about her forehead and ears and the back of her neck. She gazed at her young curve and colour and flame of life's first beauty with deep curiosity, singularly impersonal for her years. ...
— The Head of the House of Coombe • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... whole village clustered round him. They had heard of war, far-off wars in Africa and Mexico, and some of their sons had been taken off like young wheat mown before its time; but it still remained to them a thing remote, impersonal, inconceivable, with which they had nothing to do, nor ...
— Stories By English Authors: France • Various
... discovered that it is best to rent under a very large owner, whether personal as in this case, or impersonal as a college or corporation. A very large owner like this can be, and is, more liberal. He puts up sheds, and he drains, and improves, and builds good cottages for the labourers. Provided, of course, that no serious malpractice comes to light, he, as represented by his steward, never ...
— Hodge and His Masters • Richard Jefferies
... knows? the world may see a more complete severance. I look forward to it optimistically. Where the great Erasmus Darwin and Miss Anna Seward, Swan of Lichfield, experimented—and, for all their scientific ardour, failed—our descendants will experiment and succeed. An impersonal generation will take the place of Nature's hideous system. In vast state incubators, rows upon rows of gravid bottles will supply the world with the population it requires. The family system will disappear; society, sapped at its very base, will ...
— Crome Yellow • Aldous Huxley
... knelt among the others at the chancel and the bishop who had been a friend of her father's, having approached her in the long line of young and old, had laid his hands the more softly for his memories upon her brow with the impersonal prayer: ...
— The Mettle of the Pasture • James Lane Allen
... intensive system of farming not only gives regular employment and good wages; it also fits the labourer of to-day—in a country where a man can strike out for himself—to be the successful farmer of to-morrow. Nor, in these days of impersonal industrial relations, should the fact be overlooked that under an intensive system of agriculture, we find still preserved the kindly personal relation between employer and employed which contributes both to the pleasantness of life and to economic ...
— The Rural Life Problem of the United States - Notes of an Irish Observer • Horace Curzon Plunkett
... experience with children. The few he had met he had regarded with that impersonal benevolence which was his attitude toward all humanity. His formidable appearance had saved him from finding out that humanity could be cruel and brutal. So now, in his unhappiness, he had no jealous anger. He simply wanted to keep away from this small being who had caused ...
— The House in the Water - A Book of Animal Stories • Charles G. D. Roberts
... contemporaries—Coleridge, Keats, Shelley—lived so much apart from the great world of their day that important changes in manners and social opinion have made much less difference in the standard by which their lives are compared with their work. Their poetry, moreover, was mainly impersonal. Whereas Byron, by stamping his own character on so much of his verse, created a dangerous interest in the man himself; and his empeiria (as Goethe calls it), his too exclusively worldly experience, identified him with his particular class in society, rendering him largely ...
— Studies in Literature and History • Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall
... the individual German—only the deep conviction that Prussianism must be crushed at all costs. The American does not speak of "Poor old Fritz" as we do on our British Front. He's too logical to be sorry for his enemy. His attitude is too sternly impersonal for him to be moved by any emotions, whether of detestation or charity, as regards the Hun. All he knows is that a Frankenstein machinery has been set in motion for the destruction of the world; to counteract it he is creating another piece of machinery. ...
— Out To Win - The Story of America in France • Coningsby Dawson
... clear proof of their strict dramatic propriety. Hence it is that in reading his works we think not of him, but only of what he is describing: we can hardly realize his existence, his individuality is so lost in the objects and characters he brings before us. In this respect, he is a sort of impersonal intelligence, with the power to make every thing visible but itself. Had he been merely an omniloquent voice, there could hardly have been less of subjective idiom in his deliverances. That he should have known so perfectly how to avoid giving too ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson
... then danced, at first a little stiffly. But her mind gradually concentrated on her movements; she began to catch the impersonal working ...
— Through stained glass • George Agnew Chamberlain
... glass clashed. They were perfect servants, taking care to avoid the common but reprehensible method of offering dishes to persons conversing, thus interrupting the flow of talk at inopportune moments. And what talk it was!—all sorts of subjects, social and impersonal, came up for discussion, and Santoris handled them with such skill that he made us forget that there was anything remarkable or unusual about himself or his surroundings, though, as a matter of fact, no more princely banquet could ever have been ...
— The Life Everlasting: A Reality of Romance • Marie Corelli
... with us, the God of Jacob is our refuge.' The first of these two names lays the foundation of our confidence in the thought of the boundless power of Him whom all the forces of the universe, personal and impersonal, angels and stars, in their marshalled order, obey and serve. The second bids later generations claim as theirs all that the old history reveals as having belonged to the 'world's grey fathers.' They had no special prerogative of nearness or of possession. ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus and Numbers • Alexander Maclaren
... impersonal artist," of whom Matthew Arnold has so much to say, is at work in us all, subtly making us into illusions, first to ourselves and later to the historian. It is the business of history, as of analytic fiction, both to feel the power of these illusions and to work through them in imagination ...
— Abraham Lincoln and the Union - A Chronicle of the Embattled North, Volume 29 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Nathaniel W. Stephenson
... paper we are trying to start; and am now dictating this under conditions that make it impossible for it to resemble anything so personal and intimate as the great unwritten epistle to which you refer. But I will note down here very hurriedly and in a more impersonal way, some of the matters that have affected me in relation ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... progress. I did not say too much. Had I said all that was in my heart, my words would not have been so measured; for, to say the truth, we all of us dearly love the ship, as much as it is possible to love any impersonal thing. And why should we not love her? No mother can give her young more warmth and safety under her wings than she affords to us. She is indeed like a home to us. We all rejoice to return to her from out on the icy plains, and when I have been far away and have seen her masts rising over ...
— Farthest North - Being the Record of a Voyage of Exploration of the Ship 'Fram' 1893-1896 • Fridtjof Nansen
... something of my companion. His name was Edward Keene; he taught Latin and Greek in the Hilltop School; he had studied for the ministry, but had given it up, I gathered, on account of a certain loss of interest, or rather a diversion of interest in another direction. He spoke of himself with an impersonal candour. ...
— The Blue Flower, and Others • Henry van Dyke
... nice-looking young man, of about twenty-two, one might judge, and he did his smiling, though in a perfectly impersonal and correct sort of manner, at the pretty daughter of the brunette matron. The pretty daughter also smiled, but her smile was demurely directed at the trees outside, clad as they were in all the flaming ...
— The Best American Humorous Short Stories • Various
... used so widely? The answer is illuminating: we took it for granted that an individual employer would treat his artisans to some extent as human beings and not merely as cog-wheels in a productive machine; but we also took it for granted that an impersonal corporation, where no individual was dominantly responsible, would regard its artisans merely as pieces of machinery, with no ...
— The Soul of Democracy - The Philosophy Of The World War In Relation To Human Liberty • Edward Howard Griggs
... only added to the geologist's irritation to have these striking statements made in a good-humored, impersonal fashion which totally disarmed all opposition. That the Venusians were perfectly sure of their ground, was undeniable; but they had such a cheerful way of looking at it, as though they didn't care a rap whether Van Emmon agreed or not, ...
— The Lord of Death and the Queen of Life • Homer Eon Flint
... of long duration; and he would dismiss them, barely entertained, even as a sort of disloyalty, to the limbo of stillborn fancies. And so now, with his accustomed generosity, he speedily flung himself into the breach, and did his best to drive the conversation into impersonal and presumably safer channels. He touched on the prospects of the Academy, of academic art, and art in general, and by-and-by, as Oswyn rose to the discussion, he became himself interested, and was actuated less by a wish ...
— A Comedy of Masks - A Novel • Ernest Dowson and Arthur Moore
... world revolves. A general may immortalize himself, an emperor be assassinated and his empire plunged into a French Revolution, and her passing interest is not roused; nor is she unapt to wonder how others can be interested in matters so purely impersonal. She thinks she loves as no woman ever loved before, and sometimes she succeeds in making the man think so too. But when a man has gone through this sort of thing a couple of dozen times, he becomes impressed with the monotony, the shallowness, ...
— What Dreams May Come • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... style peculiar to every great master, there is in art something still superior and impersonal, which is style proper. Style is truth aggrandized, simplified, freed from all insignificant details, restored to its original essence, its typical aspect. This "style" par excellence, in which instead of recognizing the soul of an artist we feel the breath ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 5 • Various
... ought undoubtedly to be in the singular number, whether the neuter pronoun be expressed or understood: and when no nominative in the sentence can regularly be construed with the verb, it ought to be considered as impersonal. For this reason, analogy as well as usage favour [say favours] this mode of expression, 'The conditions of the agreement were as follows;' and not 'as follow.' A few late writers have inconsiderately adopted this ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... immersed in the stream of history, is yet poised on the eternal world. This life involves a complete re-direction of our desires and impulses, a transfiguration of character; and often, too, a sense of subjugation to superior guidance, of an access of impersonal strength, so overwhelming as to give many of its activities an inspirational or automatic character. We found that this life was marked by a rhythmic alternation between receptivity and activity, more complete and purposeful than the rhythm of work and rest which conditions, or ...
— The Life of the Spirit and the Life of To-day • Evelyn Underhill
... already asked myself." Again he took a step nearer. "It is a question, Florence, that admits of but one answer; one both adequate and inadequate. It is because you are you and woman, and I am I and man." Of a sudden his dark face grew swarthier still, his voice lapsed from its customary impersonal. "It ...
— Ben Blair - The Story of a Plainsman • Will Lillibridge
... in joining the others at table. To her great relief, after rising politely at her entrance and favoring her with an impersonal smile, Farrel sat down and continued to discuss with John Parker and his wife the great natural resources of Siberia and the designs of the Japanese empire upon that territory. About the time the black coffee made its appearance, Kay's harassed ...
— The Pride of Palomar • Peter B. Kyne
... the weakness of a thing unpraised. But he, this man.... He would be like a child Girt with the tomes of some vast library, Who reads romance after romance, and smiles When every tale ends well: impersonal As God he grows—melted in suns and stars; So would this boundless man, whom none could spy, Taunt him with virtue, censure him with vice, Rejoice in all men's joys; with golden pen Write all the live romances of the earth To a triumphant close.... Alone and free— In this ...
— The Wild Knight and Other Poems • Gilbert Chesterton
... do all that they do because it is their Essence to do so, or by reason of an inherent Virtue. Phaenomena are accounted for by supposed tendencies and propensities of the abstraction Nature; which, though regarded as impersonal, is figured as acting on a sort of motives, and in a manner more or less analogous to that of conscious beings. Aristotle affirms a tendency of nature towards the best, which helps him to a theory of many natural phaenomena. The rise of water in a pump ...
— Auguste Comte and Positivism • John-Stuart Mill
... anti-Semitism is a scientific stick used to beat the Jewish dog with. After impartial, impersonal scientific investigation, French and German scholars[11] demonstrated the racial inferiority of the Semite to the Aryan, enumerated the inherent Semitic qualities as greed, special aptitude for money-making, aversion to hard work, clannishness, obstrusiveness, ...
— The Menorah Journal, Volume 1, 1915 • Various
... Osiris Unnefer ("Hare God"). These are the lines upon which investigation should run. And of late years there is a notable improvement of tone in treating of symbolism or idolatry: the Lingam and the Yoni are now described as "mystical representations, and perhaps the best possible impersonal representatives of the abstract expressions paternity and maternity" (Prof. Monier Williams in "Folk-lore Record" vol. iii. part i. ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 10 • Richard F. Burton
... a Captain Jones, resident a cottage on the road to the trenches (he calls this cottage his "Battle Box"), whose mind was very violently moved from the impersonal to the personal point of view by a quite trifling incident. He has one upstairs room for office, bedroom, sitting, reception and dining room. His meals are brought over to him by his servant from an estaminet across the road over which his window looks. The other morning he ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, January 3, 1917 • Various
... excellent description of the realization of that much-to-be-desired consciousness which is fittingly described in Occidental phraseology as "cosmic consciousness." Whether this realization is the result of union with the soul's "other half," or whether it is an impersonal reunion with the Causeless Cause, The Absolute, from which we are earth wanderers, is not the direct purpose of this volume to answer, although the question will be ...
— Cosmic Consciousness • Ali Nomad
... herself, itself, themselves; one another, each other, to one another, to each other; equivalent to the passive in English, or to the impersonal ...
— Legends, Tales and Poems • Gustavo Adolfo Becquer
... Impersonal ideas of torture also excite her. She thinks Fox's Book of Martyrs "lovely," and the more horrible and bloody the tortures described the greater is the sexual excitement produced. The book excites her from the point of view of the torturer, not that ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 3 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... active leader in the foreign relief work during the war. Her portrait had even been published in the papers as one who was devoted to the cause of the stricken women and children abroad. But that had all been impersonal, while this—Already in her heart she was echoing the old familiar cry of the comparative few, "If only the people knew! If only they could be made to see as she had been made to see! The people are not so cruel. ...
— Helen of the Old House • Harold Bell Wright
... Spider's face, but it was as impersonal as the desert itself. "Mebby you figured to hold me there till you was good and ready to ...
— The Ridin' Kid from Powder River • Henry Herbert Knibbs
... sufferings, his hopes and the tumultuous and confused awakening of his genius, throughout those long years of convent-like imprisonment. He had passed from the cold discipline of the family circle, which had nevertheless been tempered by an atmosphere of kindliness, to the hard and impersonal discipline of the college school. The warm-hearted and melancholy child must needs undergo this second severe test, and he was destined to come out from it in a state of self-intoxication, a bewilderment of dreams ...
— Honor de Balzac • Albert Keim and Louis Lumet
... the world with Christmas, perhaps because he, more than any other, has tried to think and to live Christianity. When once you have got this vital truth into your mind, the whole universe is luminously filled with the possibilities of impersonal, unselfish happiness. The joy of living is suddenly expanded to the dimensions of humanity, and you can go on taking your pleasure as long as there is one unfriended soul and body in ...
— Imaginary Interviews • W. D. Howells
... something that lets the ears lie back in an easy chair. Many sounds that we are used to, do not bother us, and for that reason, we are inclined to call them beautiful. Frequently,—possibly almost invariably,—analytical and impersonal tests will show, we believe, that when a new or unfamiliar work is accepted as beautiful on its first hearing, its fundamental quality is one that tends to put the mind to sleep. A narcotic is not always unnecessary, but it is seldom a basis of progress,—that is, wholesome evolution ...
— Essays Before a Sonata • Charles Ives
... critics, neither M. Troplong, nor any of those whose opinion I value, will ever read me. Once more, my only object is to prove, as far as I am able, to this unhappy French nation, that those who make the laws, as well as those who interpret them, are not infallible organs of general, impersonal, and absolute reason. ...
— What is Property? - An Inquiry into the Principle of Right and of Government • P. J. Proudhon
... was talent; the subject-matter was Genius; and Genius had evolved an Idea which no one had ever thought of before—something brand new under the sun. It goes without saying that the Idea symbolized a great Truth. One department, the more impersonal, of Bennington's critical faculty, assured him that the Idea would take rank with the Ideas of Plato and Emerson. Emerson, Bennington worshipped. Plato he also worshipped—because Emerson told him to. He had never read Plato himself. The other, the more personal ...
— The Claim Jumpers • Stewart Edward White
... sister, just once, and then averted her eyes. Hers was the understanding which springs from love, and she realised that her simple question had struck a tender spot. Instead of waiting for an answer she switched the conversation to ordinary, impersonal topics, and kept it there ...
— The Love Affairs of Pixie • Mrs George de Horne Vaizey
... regarding him soberly, steadily, analytically, without an answering smile. It was as if she did not like what he had said—if indeed she had heard it at all—as if she were offended at it. Then the eyes look on an impersonal look and wandered thoughtfully to the mountains in the distance. Laurie felt his cheeks burn. He felt almost embarrassed again, like during the prayer. Didn't the girl know he was paying her a compliment? Or was she such a prude that she thought ...
— The City of Fire • Grace Livingston Hill
... operation. The Orthodox attribute to God a strictly moral, which is a specific method of action, addressed to purely personal or subjective issues; their opponents, a strictly physical, which is a universal method, addressed to purely impersonal and objective issues. The one party assigns to God a finite personality, or one limited by Nature; the other, an indefinite personality, as identified with natural law. The Orthodox, of course, maintain that God's creative action was universal, inasmuch ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 100, February, 1866 • Various
... hold, rolling the other man over. Thorvald obeyed his pull limply, lying face upward, sand in his hair and eyebrows, crusting his slack lips. The younger man brushed the dirt away gently as the other opened his eyes to regard Shann with his old impersonal stare. ...
— Storm Over Warlock • Andre Norton
... Old Wetherbee was sometimes given to half-audible and impersonal grumblings, but this was the first time he had ever gone so far as to voice a specific objection to an ...
— Broken to the Plow • Charles Caldwell Dobie
... as politely as I could, and my mind was at once set at ease by the purely impersonal way in which ...
— Seen and Unseen • E. Katharine Bates
... on to the next necessity of any ideal of progress. Some people (as we have said) seem to believe in an automatic and impersonal progress in the nature of things. But it is clear that no political activity can be encouraged by saying that progress is natural and inevitable; that is not a reason for being active, but rather a reason for being lazy. If we are bound to improve, ...
— Orthodoxy • G. K. Chesterton
... her, he did not quite know why. Before the thought of traveling a month in her society his mind fell back reeling, baffled by the sudden entrance of such a dazzling intruder. A month beside this glowing figure, a month under the impersonal interrogation of those cool, demanding eyes! It was as if the President or General Zachary ...
— The Emigrant Trail • Geraldine Bonner
... of the initial play material, for dolls like these invite an entirely different type of treatment. One cannot build villages, or provide extensive railroad facilities for them, nor does one regard them in the impersonal way that the "Do-with" family, or Mr. Wells' soldiers, are regarded, as incidentals in a general scheme ...
— A Catalogue of Play Equipment • Jean Lee Hunt
... staring at him, at his chest and shoulders, not at his face, but her eyes still kept their unself-conscious and almost oddly impersonal look. ...
— In the Wilderness • Robert Hichens
... said with the same impersonal air of conviction. "You see, it wouldn't make me sorry. And you don't hurt badly. Not half as much as Joe did. He was mean. He kicked. I wouldn't have stopped, all the same—if you ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver
... in a tone of almost impersonal discretion, like a man who expected very little from it but who spoke for his own needed relief. The tears came into her eyes: this time they obeyed the sharpness of the pang that suggested to her somehow the slipping of a fine bolt—backward, ...
— The Portrait of a Lady - Volume 2 (of 2) • Henry James
... imagination equal it? No premisses, no arguments therefore, can so accommodate this truth to us as not to leave the belief in it an act of mental ascent and trust, of faith as distinguished from sight. Divest reason of its trust, and the universe stops at the impersonal stage—there is no God; and yet, if the first step in religion is the greatest, how is it that the freest and boldest speculator rarely declines it? How is it that the most mysterious of all truths is a universally accepted ...
— Occasional Papers - Selected from The Guardian, The Times, and The Saturday Review, - 1846-1890 • R.W. Church
... for artistic expression. A noted debater, he made frequent use of the device of attacking the weakness of the other man's speech, rather than the weakness of the other man's argument. His prose was good, though at its best so impersonal that it recalled the manner of an exceptionally well-written leading article. At its worst it was marred by numerous vulgarities and errors of taste, not always, it is to be feared, intentional. His attitude on this point was typical ...
— The Ghost Ship • Richard Middleton
... He spoke with pleasant, impersonal kindliness, and as he turned to his satchel she slipped out of the saddle and came ...
— Uncanny Tales • Various
... mean to frighten you, Miss Wellington," he replied, not altogether in the mild, impersonal tone of a servant. "It was a perfectly ...
— Prince or Chauffeur? - A Story of Newport • Lawrence Perry
... briefly summarized have been selected to emphasize the growing intimacy between the biological and the inorganic sciences. No harm can conceivably come from it. On the contrary, there is every reason to be hopeful that the investigation of biological problems in the impersonal spirit that has long distinguished the maturer sciences of physics and chemistry will continue to develop a better control and fuller understanding of the processes in living organisms, of which the phenomena of variation in general, and of adaptation ...
— Popular Science Monthly Volume 86
... were curiously impersonal, a succession of shared aesthetic appreciation threads all that time. Our honeymoon was no exultant coming together, no mutual shout of "YOU!" We were almost shy with one another, and felt the relief of even a picture to help us out. It was entirely in my conception of things that I ...
— The New Machiavelli • Herbert George Wells
... was not new to him and now it flattered his mild proud sovereignty. Now, as never before, his strange name seemed to him a prophecy. So timeless seemed the grey warm air, so fluid and impersonal his own mood, that all ages were as one to him. A moment before the ghost of the ancient kingdom of the Danes had looked forth through the vesture of the hazewrapped City. Now, at the name of the fabulous artificer, he seemed ...
— A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man • James Joyce
... Artillery is entirely impersonal; you know that the gunners do not see you; that they are firing by arithmetic at a certain range; that their shell is not intended for anyone in particular. So you walk on striking idly with your stick at the daisies and buttercups that border your path. ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 4, July, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... caution in advising such exercises. While much of what is claimed for them may be good and true, the governing question as to what is suitable in an individual case, can obviously not be determined by any such impersonal advice. It is the exclusive right and the duty of the attending physician to prescribe whether, and to what extent, these exercises should be applied in ...
— Valere Aude - Dare to Be Healthy, Or, The Light of Physical Regeneration • Louis Dechmann
... taking the cue from her mistress pro tem., put into her impersonal gaze the coldness of a whole glacier as her eyes moved from defect to defect of Barrie's costume. The tone of that "Ah, a parcel," was unmistakable, and she knew exactly what Mrs. West thought of Miss MacDonald. ...
— The Heather-Moon • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... requests that we now received were entirely different in character from 'Cooke's' impersonal remarks. The whispers were quick and masterful, wonderfully like 'Alexander' in content. 'He' was humorous; 'he' acknowledged mistakes in the score, calling them 'slips of the pen.' 'He' became highly technical in his conversation with Blake, talking of musical matters that were ...
— The Shadow World • Hamlin Garland
... the makeshift setting of innumerable transient collocations. There was something sardonic, almost sinister, in its appearance of having deliberately "made up" for its anonymous part, all in noncommittal drabs and browns, with a carpet and paper that nobody would remember, and chairs and tables as impersonal as railway porters. ...
— The Reef • Edith Wharton
... and with such liveliness of expertness in him, too; all this would seem to argue some uncommon vivacity of intelligence. But not precisely so. For nothing was this man more remarkable, than for a certain impersonal stolidity as it were; impersonal, I say; for it so shaded off into the surrounding infinite of things, that it seemed one with the general stolidity discernible in the whole visible world; which ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville
... a distinct impression that Coolidge did not desire his company any further, yet this suspicion aroused no resentment. This was a matter with which he was in no way concerned, and the only interest he felt was strictly impersonal. His eyes followed the two as they advanced up the board walk to the front door of the cottage, and he felt a measure of surprise at seeing Coolidge calmly open the door without knocking. Both disappeared amidst the darkness within, and he dismissed the whole affair from his ...
— The Case and The Girl • Randall Parrish
... here is that the difference between eternity and creation resolves itself into a more fundamental difference between an impersonal mechanical law as the explanation of the universe and an intelligent personality acting with will, purpose and design. Aristotle endeavors to explain all motions in the world above the moon as well as below in terms of mechanics. ...
— A History of Mediaeval Jewish Philosophy • Isaac Husik
... clothe themselves in simplicity, so as to give up their millions of florins to bequeath miracles in stone and metal and color to the future." "In her throes of agony she kept always within her that love of the ideal, impersonal, consecrate, void of greed, which is the purification of the individual life and the regeneration of the body politic." "Her great men drew their inspiration from the very air they breathed, and the men who knew they ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII, No. 29. August, 1873. • Various
... Annie Pearce. Apparently the piece is a juvenile effort, since despite a commendably poetic atmosphere there are some striking errors of construction. In the third line of the first stanza there is a very awkward use of the impersonal pronoun one. This pronoun has no place in good poetry, and should always be avoided by means of some equivalent arrangement. In the second stanza it appears that the authoress, through the exigencies ...
— Writings in the United Amateur, 1915-1922 • Howard Phillips Lovecraft
... to be innocent. He found, when he got to the office of these noted lawyers, that the two principals were locked in their private room; and going there, he found them discussing the case with the coolness and impersonal feeling that noted lawyers have even when speaking of issues ...
— From Whose Bourne • Robert Barr
... deeds of any particular person, but those of the members of a whole. And, again, since hostility is directed, not against separate individuals, but against a hostile whole, personal valor appears as impersonal. This principle it is which has caused the invention of the gun; it is not a chance invention that has brought about the change of the mere personal form of bravery into the ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • Various
... it is in London that at long last and in some quite impersonal way clutches at the heart and receives one's eager affection. At first, even though you be one of her children, she seems and for how long like something fallen, calling you with the monotonous, mighty, complaining voice of ...
— England of My Heart—Spring • Edward Hutton
... would have been welcome enough. But this impersonal method of knocking the ground from under his feet goaded him to exasperation. He had not even the satisfaction of knowing that he had wrought jealousy or friction between husband and wife. Desmond had practically ignored his existence. ...
— Captain Desmond, V.C. • Maud Diver
... was not so much his own as an echo from Father Leadham. In Helbeck's mind it was spoken very much as the priest had spoken it—with that strange tenderness, at once so intimate and so impersonal, which belongs to the spiritual relations of Catholicism. The girl's soul—lonely, hostile, uncared for—appealed to the charity of the believer. At the same time there was something in her defiance, her crude ...
— Helbeck of Bannisdale, Vol. I. • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... the swathed woman stood, looking out upon that slaughter, calm and still, shrouded with an unearthly tranquillity—viewing it, it came to me, with eyes impersonal, cold, indifferent as the untroubled stars which look down upon hurricane and earthquake in this world ...
— The Metal Monster • A. Merritt
... and receiving curious impersonal glances, Amory decided that he liked the movies, wanted to enjoy them as the row of upper classmen in front had enjoyed them, with their arms along the backs of the seats, their comments Gaelic and caustic, their attitude a mixture of critical ...
— This Side of Paradise • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... of the preliminary period. Up to the 4th of September, 1870, and for a few years beyond, State policy is the proper name for whatever occurs; we deal to a large extent with mathematical quantities, with impersonal obstructions. Statesmen and statecraft are in their place, and fill it; individuals, however distinguished, are, as it were, sheathed in collective symbols and represented by principles. Documentary evidence suffices now! Treaties, minutes, diplomatic reports, instruments of all descriptions, ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 21, August, 1891 • Various
... he had overheard had shocked him to the core of his being. The Hotel Cosmopolis was his own private, personal property, and the thing dearest to him in the world, after his daughter Lucille. He prided himself on the fact that his hotel was not like other New York hotels, which were run by impersonal companies and shareholders and boards of directors, and consequently lacked the paternal touch which made the Cosmopolis what it was. At other hotels things went wrong, and clients complained. At the Cosmopolis things never went wrong, because he was on the spot to see that they didn't, and ...
— Indiscretions of Archie • P. G. Wodehouse
... and of the Irish Rebellion, while Rush (in a study On the Influence of the American Revolution on the Human Body) observed that many hysterical women were "restored to perfect health by the events of the time." In such cases the emotional tension is given an opportunity of explosion in new and impersonal channels, and the chain of morbid personal ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 1 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... of his words, they stood stock-still, in a huddled group, staring out over the plain. Their nerves were numbed by the sudden shock, and to all of them it was like a scene in a dream, vague, impersonal, and un-real. The men upon the camels had streamed out from a gorge which lay a mile or so distant on the side of the path along which they had travelled. Their retreat, therefore, was entirely cut off. It appeared, from the dust and the length of the line, ...
— The Tragedy of The Korosko • Arthur Conan Doyle
... upon the wrapper either their own comments or those of Miss ELISABETH SANXAY HOLDING, the author. Because for my part, reading these, I formed the idea (entirely wrong) that the book would be in some way pretentious and affected; whereas it is the simple truth to call it the most mercilessly impersonal piece of fiction that I think I ever read. There is far too much plot for me to give you any but a suggestion of it. The story is of the lives of two sisters, Frances and Minnie; mostly (as the title implies) of Minnie. To say ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, August 4th, 1920 • Various
... host or the guest. The dinner is given in payment of another dinner; or out of ambition by people who are striving to get forward in society; or by great social figures who give regularly a certain number of dinners every season. In either case it is eaten from motives at once impersonal and selfish. I do not mean to say that I have not been at many dinners where I felt nothing perfunctory either in host or guest, and where as sweet and gay a spirit ruled as at any of our own simple feasts. Still, I think our main impression of American hospitality ...
— Through the Eye of the Needle - A Romance • W. D. Howells
... years' existence, were risings, not against the law, but for the law against the laxity of its administrators. This very fact makes it the more clear how uncertain and ineffective is the authority of abstract law and an impersonal Sovereign. The legal authorities, State or Federal, are not necessarily representative of the power by which they are elected. In California, after a period of anarchy, the respectable classes rose with the tacit support of the people against the State Government which the people ...
— The Quarterly Review, Volume 162, No. 324, April, 1886 • Various
... manner of men who seek to influence a young girl's mind and heart, he lent her books to read, and he marked his favorite passages, which he discussed afterward. They were not passages of abstract thought and impersonal sentiment, like the penciled notes in Alick Corfield's literary loans, but scenes of passion or of pathos, going straight to the heart of youth, which feels rather than reflects, or descriptions of places which ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. XVII, No. 99, March, 1876 • Various
... should I say he had any that was worth his attention."-I am, though from very different reasons, in Jem's happy state of indifference. Let fame follow those who have a substantial shape. A shadow-and an impersonal author is ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott
... that his presence was not annoying her. But she reckoned without the efficient United States mail service. The rejected lover wrote lengthy, friendly letters which she answered at long intervals by short, impersonal little notes. ...
— Amanda - A Daughter of the Mennonites • Anna Balmer Myers
... to attend to Balaam with impersonal skill, like some one hired for the purpose. "He ain't hurt bad," he asserted aloud, as if the man were some nameless patient; and then to Balaam he remarked, "I reckon it might have put a less tough man than you out of business for quite a while. I'm ...
— The Virginian - A Horseman Of The Plains • Owen Wister
... gathered up his reins. "Boyd told me about Grandfather," he added in a rush. "I'm sorry." And he was, he told himself, sorry for Aunt Marianna, who had to stay at Red Springs now, and even a little in an impersonal way for the old man, who must find inactivity a worse prison than any stone-walled room. But it was being polite about a stranger. "Major Forbes ...
— Ride Proud, Rebel! • Andre Alice Norton
... It was an unreasonable feeling, because the interests of the two classes were identical. But as capital was consolidated and great corporations were formed for extensive operations in transportation and manufacturing, the relation between the two became very impersonal and difficult to control. In order to protect their interests the wage-earners organized into unions, brotherhoods, etc., almost every trade and calling having ...
— Daybreak: A Romance of an Old World • James Cowan |
